Custodians of culture

Well, you may say, we are lucky as a nation that we do not have many Manekas and Sripads in the drivers’ seat to force us to change our habits from dawn to dusk.They are happily no match to Pravin Tagodia (VHP doctor from Gujarat), Sakshi Maharaj (lawmaker from Unnao, Uttar Pradesh) and the like who would love to see every one of us waking up to a Bhajan, and retiring to bed without an adventurous outing in the evening at a bistro or a bordello

Maneka Gandhi appears set to do one–up on Baba Ramdev, the Yoga Guru who has made Haridwar his base for his brand of televangelism and Ayurveda drugs. Nearly a decade ago, the Baba created a stir with his attack on fizzy drinks. “Treat soft drinks as toilet cleaners,” he exhorted the thousands who used to turn up for his Yoga classes. His advice: “Take hot water, milk or juice and practice yoga everyday.” A post on his twitter account still reads: “Coke and Pepsi not only toilet cleaners (but) causes cancer.”

While holding forth on every subject from homosexuality (“I can cure homosexuals within six months”) to corruption and black money (he staged ‘Brashhtachar Mitao Satyagrah’ in Delhi in June 2011), he gave a slip to urine, which a former Prime Minister Morarji Desai considered as perfect recipe for good health. Now the daughter-in-law of Indira Gandhi, who had had several tense moments at the hands of Desai in her early “Gungi–Gudiya” (dumb doll) days, has picked up the Desai threads and put her own spin on the long forgotten Gandhian thought.

Maneka has been championing the cause of dumb animals to the discomfort of all those engaged in drug design and drug discovery. The advocacy of cow urine therapy, therefore, marks a natural progression. The reasons she is offering to promote use of “Gaunyle” as a surface cleaner, must please Baba Ramdev and his friends in the days he roamed Alipur village (Mahendragarh district, Haryana) as Ram Krishna Yadav. “I would request you to replace phenyl, which is currently being used in your ministry and is chemically bad for environment, with Gaunyle,” Maneka Gandhi wrote to her colleagues in the Modi cabinet.

Phenyl is the cheap cleaning liquid which is widely used in government offices to clean floor and toilets. It has a synthetic base. So her advisory: “Give up Phenyl. Opt for a natural disinfectant made from extracts of cow urine”. Gaunyle is marketed by a NGO and is available at government-run Kendriya Bhandars in Delhi. You may say it is no small mercy that Maneka did not call for application of cow dung on the floor of all government offices every day before anyone entered the premises. My take is different.

Advocacy of cow dung could have garnered for her all the glory and she could have ended up as the true “Made in India” champion to the discomfort of Modi-Shah combine. As a truly loyal worker, she doesn’t want to upset anyone in the Parivar, of course, as long as son Varun is assured of a decent slot, and finds no need to go for an “atma manthan” like cousin Rahul. Frankly, Maneka Gandhi is not alone to ‘reinvent” the Holy Cow for Chatterati – the self-righteous misanthropes, who end up as the villains and court jesters at Arnab Goswami-directed News Hour.

Culture Minister Sripad Naik from North Goa has already delighted his peers by hailing the virtues of Panchagavya (also known as Panchakavyam) - a concoction prepared by mixing cow milk, urine, dung, ghee and curd. No surprise he doubles up as Minister for Ayush that stands for Ayurveda, Yoga & Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, and Homoeopathy. Well, you may say, we are lucky as a nation that we do not have many Manekas and Sripads in the drivers’ seat to force us to change our habits from dawn to dusk.

They are happily no match to Pravin Tagodia (VHP doctor from Gujarat), Sakshi Maharaj (lawmaker from Unnao, Uttar Pradesh) and the like who would love to see every one of us waking up to a Bhajan, and retiring to bed without an adventurous outing in the evening at a bistro or a bordello. Ordinary clothes that cannot be termed ‘provocative’, and simple vegetarian meals that is no more than ‘ghaas-phoos’ will compliment the Desi Avatar in the Tagodia-Maharaj mode. The bellowing, wide half-pants is a good fit for men set for the drill in the neighbourhood grounds. So it will be spared the axe.

“How long can one trust one’s luck to hold out?” asks a veteran journalist and concedes with a sheepish grin that he has no ready answer. As the saying goes, the jury is out. For the present we know this much. Our daily chores are being increasingly subjected to “firmans,” the “no beef” being the latest in a state that is also home to the country’s most happening city.

Long, long years ago, before Max Mullers of the world had an idea of Indus civilization, beef, for that matter, meat, was not a taboo for enlightened souls. The new diktat is unlikely to make the beef-eaters to do a vanishing trick, though. The tipplers have not disappeared from Gujarat, which has been the lone torch-bearer of prohibition for long years. Babu Shankar Patel (70), a retired school teacher from Mehsana, gave a reality check to “Dry” Gujarat this Monday.

He quietly got up in the VIP gallery of the Assembly, removed a liquor pouch from his turban, and threw the pouch into the Assembly well. Why did he indulge in such dramatics? Read his pamphlet. “Prohibition is like a milch cow that nobody wants to let go because of the illegal benefits it gives.I demand the state government scrap the liberal policy to give permits to five-star hotels for serving liquor,” it read.

Whatever be the likes of Markandeya Katju and Arundhati Roy may say of Gandhiji, the fact remains that Gandhiji died twice first when Nathuram Gadse fired his shots at him on 30 January 1948 and then again when the end of Gandhi centenary year in 1969 heralded the end of prohibition in several states including composite Andhra Pradesh. Revenue became the consideration to give birth to belt shops, which are thriving.

What is the moral of the story? Tipplers and aam aadmi alike need not worry about the contemporary custodians of our ‘culture.’ Bill Clinton is right after all. It is economy, stupid!

(The writer, Delhi-based senior journalist and South Asia analyst, can be reached at m [email protected])